Take 2. Friday's Guide to Movies & Music. Music. Concert line.

The `Barns' Heat Up With Sade, Rod Stewart And More

The area's large outdoor venues have booked only a modest number of shows this season, compared with past years, as the recession-hit concert business has rebounded slowly.

But now there's a flurry of activity in the barns and it largely dominates this week's Chicago concert scene. The warmup may be thanks to a less-glutted market and better dollar-value, multiple-act shows rather than to any intense new consumer craving to fill concert halls again.

At any rate, things get under way Friday night with that cool pop-soul operator Sade at the World Music Theatre in Tinley Park. Opening is the hip and jazzy new rap act Digable Planets. Lawn tickets and a limited number of pavilion seats remain.

Rod "The Mod" Stewart flogged new life into his almost quarter-century old career by resurrecting his repertoire in an "Unplugged . . . And Seated" setting (his recent album of the same name is a million-selling Top 10 hit). He sits down for shows Friday and Saturday at Poplar Creek in Hoffman Estates. The opening act is Patty Smyth. The former lead singer with Scandal and owner of a couple of pop hits ("Never Enough," "Downtown Train") resurfaced last year with a gold-selling self-titled album. Both nights have only lawn tickets available.

Those warm and fuzzy Phish folks, one of the more popular of the new psychedelic jam bands, get a shot at headlining a big outdoor venue here with Saturday's show at the World Music Theatre. Pavilion tickets only are being sold for this show and, with no opening act on the bill, expect plenty of those patented long jams.

Expect the unexpected from Neil Young, who seldom does the same thing twice on record or on tour. This time out, his backup band is Booker T. & the MG's, the premier studio band of '60s Memphis soul and the group responsible for such cool '60s soul instrumentals as "Time Is Tight," "Hang 'Em High" and "Green Onions." Word is that, while there may be a soulful edge to the show, Booker T., Duck Dunn, Steve Cropper and Jim Keltner largely rock behind the Young-ster. Soundgarden, the pioneering Seattle (by way of Park Forest) grunge outfit, and Blind Melon open the show Sunday at the World Music Theatre.

Sunday also sees the return of Steely Dan at Poplar Creek. The sleek and stylish Dan made artistic waves and landed on the charts with tunes like "Do It Again," "Rikki Don't Lose that Number," "Deacon Blues," "FM" and "Hey Nineteen" and its jazzy pop style and world weary West Coast decline-and-fall sensibility. Almost a decade after the lead team of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen split up, they reunited to work on the New York Rock and Soul Revue project and then to record Fagen's second solo album (which appeared some 11 years after his first). Though the recently released, gold-selling concept set, "Kamakiriad," is credited to Fagen, Becker produced and played on the album and, more important, the entire project is imbued with that trademark Steely Dan sensibility. Now, with another crack team of session players in tow, the two embark on a rare tour.

Finally, this week sees the return of UB40. The clever British band was one of the most exciting outfits to emerge from the '80s U.K. rock 'n' reggae revival, scoring hits with "Red Red Wine," "I Got You Babe" (with Chrissie Hynde) and "The Way You Do The Things You Do" and doing a set of albums that showcased the band's smart modern sound and socially conscious themes. The group just returned from a several-year absence with a solid new album, "Promises and Lies." Judging from the response to the first single, "Can't Help Falling In Love" (a song also featured in the soundtrack to "Sliver") that hit No. 1 on the Billboard chart, they've been missed. Opening for UB40 Monday at Poplar Creek is the Gin Blossoms.

Other concerts of note

Friday

John Prine and Nanci Griffith at the Rialto Square in Joliet: This folkie/singer-songwriter double bill features Prine, whose roots go back to the glorious days of the great Chicago folk boom (Prine's work is being treated to a two-disc retrospective ranging from his first recordings to selections from his most recent releases, due next week on Rhino Records) and Griffith, one of the key figures (and more romantically poetic stylists) to have emerged from the neotraditional country/new folk scene of Texas.